Priya PatelTLDR:
– Federal officials are investigating widespread cell phone outages affecting AT&T and its Cricket Wireless carrier, with no evidence of a cyber attack found so far.
– The outage began early Thursday morning, impacting over 70,000 customers nationwide before service was mostly restored by 11 a.m.
In a press conference on Thursday, federal officials stated that there is currently no indication that the widespread AT&T outage was caused by a cyber attack. The outage, which affected tens of thousands of people, began early Thursday morning, with more than 70,000 customers nationwide losing connectivity by 9 a.m. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security are assisting AT&T with the investigation, but AT&T has stated that they have no reason to believe this was a cybersecurity incident.
John Kirby, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, mentioned that the Federal Communications Commission was in contact with AT&T to offer federal assistance in the investigation. The outage also impacted emergency response networks, leaving many people unable to call 911 in several states, and officials advised using landlines or Wi-Fi for communication. Service was mostly restored by 11 a.m., with only around 3,000 remaining outages reported by mid-afternoon.
The Department of Commerce was also affected by the outage, but Kirby stated that it was not considered crippling. While other providers like Verizon and T-Mobile experienced some outages, they were mostly related to customers trying to reach AT&T users. As the investigation continues, federal agencies are working to uncover the cause of the outage and ensure that similar incidents can be prevented in the future.
